Nobody it seems will go to church this day. No blessing to be expected
perhaps upon views so worldly, and in some so cruel.
They have a mistrust that I have some device in my head. Betty has been
looking among my clothes. I found her, on coming up from depositing my
letter to Lovelace (for I have written!) peering among them; for I had
left the key in the lock. She coloured, and was confounded to be caught.
But I only said, I should be accustomed to any sort of treatment in
time. If she had her orders--those were enough for her.
She owned, in her confusion, that a motion had been made to abridge
me of my airings; and the report she should make, would be of no
disadvantage to me. One of my friends, she told me, urged in my behalf,
That there was no need of laying me under greater restraint, since Mr.
Lovelace's threatening to rescue me by violence, were I to have been
carried to my uncle's, was a conviction that I had no design to go to
him voluntarily; and that if I had, I should have made preparations
of that kind before now; and, most probably, had been detected in
them.--Hence, it was also inferred, that there was no room to doubt,
but I would at last comply. And, added the bold creature, if you don't
intend to do so, your conduct, Miss, seems strange to me.--Only thus
she reconciled it, that I had gone so far, I knew not how to come off
genteelly: and she fancied I should, in full congregation, on Wednesday,
give Mr. Solmes my hand. And then said the confident wench, as the
learned Dr. Brand took his text last Sunday, There will be joy in
heaven--
This is the substance of my letter to Mr. Lovelace:
'That I have reasons of the greatest consequence to myself (and which,
when known, must satisfy him) to suspend, for the present, my intention
of leaving my father's house: that I have hopes that matters may be
brought to an happy conclusion, without taking a step, which nothing
but the last necessity could justify: and that he may depend upon my
promise, that I will die rather than consent to marry Mr. Solmes.'
And so, I am preparing myself to stand the shock of his exclamatory
reply. But be that what it will, it cannot affect me so much, as the
apprehensions of what may happen to me next Tuesday or Wednesday; for
now those apprehensions engage my whole attention, and make me sick at
the very heart.